Siping

Siping sits in southwestern Jilin on the border with Liaoning, a railway city on the main line between Shenyang and Changchun. It is best known in modern history for the fiercely contested battles fought here during the Chinese Civil War, remembered at the Siping Campaign Memorial Hall. Just to the east, the ruins of Yehe were the seat of the Yehe Nara clan, a powerful Manchu tribe and the ancestral home of the Qing empress dowager Cixi. Nearby, the Yitong Manchu Autonomous County preserves Manchu culture and a cluster of extinct volcanoes rising abruptly from the plain. The Erlongshan reservoir is a popular local getaway. Siping's economy centers on farm machinery, food processing and its rich black-soil agriculture.